Tag Archives: resources

The House Natural Resource Committee’s climate change hearing turned into a heated conversation about race

Subscribe to The Beacon

On Wednesday, while the rest of the nation was busy scrolling through Pelosi State of the Union golf clap memes, two major panels — the House Natural Resources Committee and a separate subcommittee on energy and commerce — met to discuss the impact of global warming on the nation as a whole.

This marks the first time the Natural Resources Committee has held a hearing on climate change in a decade, and newly empowered House Democrats have even more hearings on climate planned throughout the month.

The hearing started off on a contentious foot, with speakers calling into question everything from climate science, to poverty, to whether the timing of the hearings was somehow disrespectful to Black History Month.

“I know you have made February as climate change month, I appreciate the fact that that you picked the shortest month of the year to to do that,” said Republican Rob Bishop, former chair of the Natural Resources Committee, to the current chair Raul Grijalva. “It also happens to be of course Black History Month, which I wish we could deal with other things.”

Bishop, who is white, went on argue that it would be more within the committee’s purview to focus on the preservation of sites historically relevant to the African-American community — such as historically black colleges or Central High School, where teens later known as the “Little Rock Nine” forced Arkansas to enforce federal desegregation laws — than for the panel to pontificate on climate change.

Throughout the hearing, speakers both emphasized and clashed over climate and energy as a racial and social justice issues.

Reverend Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, a nonprofit organization that produces a podcast combining hip hop music and climate action, called climate change “a civil and human rights issue,” and the “lunch counter moment for the 21st century.”

Elizabeth Yeampierre, representing the Brooklyn community-based organization UPROSE and the nationwide Climate Justice Alliance said that, “Our communities are the first and most impacted by the storms, fires, floods and droughts, and are disproportionately burdened by the pollution, poverty and systemic violence associated with the multinational corporations driving these ecological crises.” While she called for a transition away from fossil fuels, she acknowledged that it would not be “smooth” and that efforts would need to be made so no communities are left behind.

Not everyone agreed on how to uplift low-income families and neighborhoods of color. Derrick Hollie, president of Reaching for America, a group that advocates for affordable energy for communities of color, argued that African-American communities need cheaper sources of energy, as black residents tend to spend a larger proportion of their budgets on heating and cooling costs, partially due to lower-quality housing construction and insulation.

“The African-American community, we don’t have the luxury to pay more for green technologies, we need access to affordable energy to help heat our homes, power our stoves, and get back and forth to work,” said Hollie, who is black.

Instead of focusing on a transition to renewable energy, Hollie argued for greater investment in natural gas, which he said was more affordable. “For many Americans, this allows them not to have to choose between keeping the lights on and feeding their families,” he said.

Reverend Yearwood and Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado — both of whom are black — pushed back on Hollie, pointing to research into how black communities have disproportionately borne the health burdens of natural gas and other fossil fuels.

“For me as a minister, having buried a young girl because of asthma, that mother no longer cares about how much that utility bill would have cost.” said Yearwood. “We can definitely fight poverty and pollution at the same time.”

Several other speakers highlighted the ways in which Americans are already coping with the effects of climate change on health and safety.

“North Carolinians know about [climate change] the hard way. We have weathered two so-called 500 year floods within two years,” Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina told the committee. “For survivors of these storms, the true costs are incalculable.”

Governor Cooper (a Democrat) and Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts (a Republican) then teamed up to defend climate science and denounce efforts to open the Atlantic to offshore drilling.

Republicans invited controversial climatologist Judith Curry, whose work has been used by climate skeptics as an argument against taking action, to speak to the committee. She has voiced doubts over how much of an impact human activity has on the climate, and questions whether climate models projecting the effects of a warming world are reliable. (As a group, climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is a real threat and a result of human activity)

Curry was joined on the panel by her former colleague Kim Cobb, a climate scientist and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Curry retired in 2017). Unlike Curry, Cobb gave vehement testimony during the hearing’s second panel on the disastrous consequences of climate change, including prolonged droughts, wildfires, and storms.

Although the economic costs of those events “can be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Cobb said,“their real toll, the vast human suffering left in their wake, is immeasurable.”

The Natural Resources Committee will meet again Thursday afternoon for more livestreamed debate on climate change and ocean health.

Read More – 

The House Natural Resource Committee’s climate change hearing turned into a heated conversation about race

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The House Natural Resource Committee’s climate change hearing turned into a heated conversation about race

5 Ways You Might Be Contributing to Water Pollution

The health of our planet?s water is critical to life on Earth, yet it?s being polluted at an alarming rate. And humans are to blame. In fact, roughly 80 percent of ocean pollution comes from land, primarily from human activity. Here are five ways people contribute to water pollution in their everyday lives ? and what you can do to help combat the problem.

1. Plastic use

Maybe you?ve seen the viral video of the sea turtle who got a plastic straw stuck up its nose, and you decided to give up straws. That?s a great start. But the plastic problem facing the ocean goes a whole lot deeper. Millions of metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, influenced by population size and waste management standards, according to one study.

It all comes down to how much plastic people use. If you want to do your part to minimize plastic pollution, avoid disposable plastics wherever you can ? straws, drink lids, cutlery, grocery bags, water bottles, etc. Steer clear of beauty products with plastic microbeads. Consider the packaging when you make a purchase. For instance, you might be able to buy food from bulk bins using your own reusable containers, rather than purchasing a product packaged in plastic. And, of course, always responsibly recycle plastic whenever you can.

2. Pouring toxins down the sink or toilet

If your kid tries to flush one of their toys down the toilet, it might just mean a hefty plumber?s bill for you. But if an item that isn?t biodegradable makes it down a drain, that could affect the sewage treatment process. Those items often end up polluting water and beaches, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, so never let them go down the drain.

Furthermore, keep toxins far away from your drains, as well ? think old paint, chemical cleaners and unused medication. Instead, find a hazardous waste collection facility near you to dispose of them responsibly. The extra effort certainly is worth it to avoid those chemicals someday making an appearance in your drinking water.

3. Washing your own car

Being a model car owner doesn?t just make the roads safer. It also can keep our water cleaner. ?Good maintenance can reduce the leaking of oil, coolant, antifreeze, and other nasty liquids that are carried by rainwater down driveways or through parking lots and then seep into groundwater supplies,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

So what about a car wash? Although it costs more money, it actually might be more environmentally friendly to head to a professional car wash instead of doing it yourself. ?The pros are required to drain their wastewater into sewer systems, where the water is treated for all the bad stuff before being discharged,? the Natural Resources Defense Council says. ?Many even recycle that water.?

4. Not picking up after your dog

If you have a dog, hopefully you?re already a responsible pet owner picking up its waste. And you can pat yourself on the back twice because you?re also preventing pathogens from entering our water supply. ?Rain can carry pathogens in dog waste into streams where people swim, making them sick,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The nitrogen and phosphorus in dog waste also can contribute to toxic algae blooms and harm marine life.

And if you have a feline friend, never flush your cat?s poop down the toilet unless it has tested negative for toxoplasmosis. Cats excrete the parasite that causes the disease, which can lead to serious health complications in some people. If you don’t have a municipal compost program that accepts pet waste, the most practical option is to bag it ? preferably in an eco-friendly bag ? and throw it in the trash.

5. Applying lawn chemicals

As long as people insist on having the greenest lawn on the block and growing plants that don?t really belong in their environment, they?ll use fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Those chemicals might make your grass green, but they also have some serious consequences.

?When lawn chemicals are applied improperly, they can run off into streams, harming fish and other animals and contaminating our drinking water,? according to the Environmental Protection Agency. ?Overapplication of any lawn chemical can result in runoff that carries toxic levels of chemicals or excessive nutrients into lakes, streams and groundwater.?

Thankfully, there are many viable alternatives to toxic lawn chemicals that will keep your garden growing. Try organic lawn treatments or compost to feed your plants. Landscape with native species, which require less assistance from you. And test your soil for nutrient deficiencies before you apply anything unnecessarily.

Main image credit: Toa55/Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Continue reading:

5 Ways You Might Be Contributing to Water Pollution

Posted in alo, bigo, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, OXO, PUR, Safer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Ways You Might Be Contributing to Water Pollution

Uber and Lyft passengers are ultra-wealthy. Will this keep cities from investing in transit?

Turns out, a lot of Uber and Lyft users are rich. And not just a little rich: According to a new report, 45 percent of their customers in dense urban areas make over $200,000 per year. Eek. Only around 13 percent of Uber and Lyft passengers have incomes below $50,000. That could be bad for public transit — and the climate.

For years, ride-hailing companies have claimed their services will be a net-positive for energy use, traffic congestion, and urban planning. But research over the last year has suggested otherwise. Uber and Lyft pull riders away from public transit – rather than just away from their personal cars – and according to the same study, all those extra vehicles are choking up city streets.

In New York City subway ridership has fallen for the second year in a row, and transit authorities are blaming the rise of Uber and Lyft. And, given the new study, it could mean that it’s higher income transit riders that are increasingly avoiding mass transit.

The danger of this trend is that the most affluent city residents won’t see any reason to invest in — and vote for — big transit projects, which are essential to lowering transport emissions and creating more livable cities. “If the affluent voter or the swing voter is not taking the bus anyway, it’s really easy for people to just say: ‘Oh, we can just take Uber and forget about any kind of public transport,’” says Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who researches transportation. Meanwhile, low-income residents who depend most on mass transit could be left behind.

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers-funded conservative lobbying group, has used ride-hailing to attack public transit projects around the country. Organizers often use Uber, Lyft, and autonomous vehicles as examples of the future of public transit, ignoring the fact that these services will be out of reach for many low-income residents.

“If you’re wealthier and your subway doesn’t work [well], it’s not as much of a burden to take an Uber instead. But if you’re less wealthy and trying to get to work, you could easily lose half a day’s pay trying to find a different way of getting around,” Gelinas says.

And right now, no one using ride-hailing services is paying full price. “TNCs [transportation network companies] are at the moment still pretty heavily subsidized by venture capital,” says Carter Rubin, mobility and climate advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These companies don’t make money, so everyone is getting a nice discount.”

For the time being, that means that Uber and Lyft are more accessible to low-income residents than they would be otherwise — but it also means that prices could shift at any time.

In some ways, Uber and Lyft have been a boon to low-income and minority communities. A recent study shows that their cars service areas that taxis have traditionally avoided, and that people of color face less discrimination when hailing a Lyft or Uber than a taxi.

But it’s worrisome that what some view as the transportation method of the future is, at the moment, mostly accessible to the ultra-rich among us.

And ride-sharing can’t save us from climate change: only high-density public transit can. As Rubin tells Grist: “The idea that TNCs and autonomous vehicles will get us out of our transit problems — it just doesn’t square with the geometric realities of our climate goals.”

View original article:  

Uber and Lyft passengers are ultra-wealthy. Will this keep cities from investing in transit?

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Uber and Lyft passengers are ultra-wealthy. Will this keep cities from investing in transit?

The lead poisoning of Flint’s children pales in comparison to rates found in parts of California.

Nanette Barragán is used to facing off against polluters. Elected in 2013 to the city council of Hermosa Beach, California, she took on E&B Natural Resources, an oil and gas company looking to drill wells on the beach. Barragán, an attorney before going into politics, learned of the potential project and began campaigning for residents to vote against it. The project was eventually squashed. In November, she won a congressional seat in California’s 44th district.

To Barragán, making sure President Trump’s environmental rollbacks don’t affect communities is a matter of life or death. The district she represents, the same in which she grew up, encompasses heavily polluted parts of Los Angeles County — areas crisscrossed with freeways and dotted with oil and gas wells. Barragan says she grew up close to a major highway and suffered from allergies. “I now go back and wonder if it was related to living that close,” she says.

Exide Technologies, a battery manufacturer that has polluted parts of southeast Los Angeles County with arsenic, lead, and other chemicals for years, sits just outside her district’s borders. Barragán’s district is also 69 percent Latino and 15 percent black. She has become acutely aware of the environmental injustices of the pollution plaguing the region. “People who are suffering are in communities of color,” she says.

Now in the nation’s capital, Barragán is chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s newly formed environmental task force and a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which considers legislation on topics like energy and public lands and is chaired by climate denier Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican. She knows the next four years will be tough but says she’s up for the challenge. “I think it’s going to be, I hate to say it, a lot of defense.”


Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Continue at source:  

The lead poisoning of Flint’s children pales in comparison to rates found in parts of California.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Ringer, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The lead poisoning of Flint’s children pales in comparison to rates found in parts of California.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by a whopping 29 percent this year — but there’s a way to slow it.

For the first time in eight years, OPEC — you know, that cartel of 14 oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela — made a deal to curb production starting in January.

It’s partially a response to the worldwide glut of oil that has battered crude prices over recent years. OPEC’s profits from oil exports have plunged from a record $920 billion in 2012 to $341 billion this year. This puts countries that depend on oil exports (looking at you, Venezuela) between a shale rock and a hard place.

To push prices back up, OPEC members agreed to slash production, leading to an 8 percent spike in crude prices on Wednesday. Investors raced to buy shares of U.S. shale oil companies. Continental Resources  — founded by Harold Hamm, Trump’s energy advisor — jumped 25 percent after the announcement. Whiting Petroleum soared 32 percent, its biggest one-day jump in 13 years.

This celebration is sure to lead to a hangover. For one, OPEC countries have a hard time sticking to their agreements. And experts predict a long century of decline for oil as demand peaks in the next decade. Of course, those estimates assume countries will keep their pledges to combat climate change.

See original article:  

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by a whopping 29 percent this year — but there’s a way to slow it.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by a whopping 29 percent this year — but there’s a way to slow it.

U.N. climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

International negotiators are coming together on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, for the most highly anticipated climate gathering of the year. But they’ll spend the first couple of days doing exactly the same thing as the rest of the world: holding their breath as they nervously watch to see how the U.S. presidential election turns out.

Yes, America’s 2016 electoral dumpster fire will loom large at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, aka COP22. The main goal of the Marrakech meeting is to hash out more specific plans for putting last year’s landmark Paris climate agreement into action. Donald Trump has said he would “cancel” the agreement, so if he’s elected, negotiators are likely to panic. If an antagonistic American president moved to pull the U.S. out of the deal, implementing it around the globe would become a whole lot more difficult.

If, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton is elected, then conferees will feel more confident in getting down to work.

Riding a wave of momentum

U.S. election aside, there’s a lot of positive momentum heading into COP22. The Paris Agreement formally entered into force on Nov. 4, much earlier than anticipated. That’s because leaders of other countries wanted to make sure the deal was done before American voters had a chance to throw it off-course, so they kicked their normally lethargic ratification processes into high gear. That says a lot about the unprecedented level of international commitment to this deal.

The month leading up to Marrakech saw two other notable steps toward climate progress. On Oct. 6, more than 190 nations reached the world’s first agreement to cut emissions from international flights. And on Oct. 15, over 170 countries pledged to rid air conditioners and refrigerators of hydrofluorocarbons — which can have warming potential thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide — in a legally binding accord, potentially cutting warming by 0.5 degrees C.

So negotiators are landing in Morocco on a wave of optimism. At the same time, they know there’s a great deal that still needs to be done. Says Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute, “The COP is about celebrating, but it’s not about complacency.”

At last year’s Paris climate conference, 195 countries made a nonbinding agreement to keep warming below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, with a stretch goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees. Each nation made an action pledge to cut or curb its greenhouse gas emissions, and agreed to ratchet up its commitment in the future. The Paris signatories also agreed to raise more funds to help poorer countries adapt to a warming world.

Now, in Marrakech, negotiators will try to figure out how to turn those promises into action. They won’t be able to sort everything out, so some of the work will roll into 2018. But here are the three big issues on the agenda:

1) Money

One of the most contentious topics in Paris was money — big surprise — and you can expect the same in Marrakech.

In 2009, wealthier nations agreed to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance yearly by 2020 to aid poorer nations. In Paris, the rich countries reconfirmed that commitment, and in mid-October, released a plan for how they’d get there.

But many leaders from developing nations and policy advocates say $100 billion falls far short of what’s needed for countries to create programs that stave off climate change and build infrastructure that can withstand it, while working to improve quality of life for their citizens and grow jobs and GDP.

“My organization and many others remain concerned that this is nowhere near enough the amount of money that is needed to help the most vulnerable communities,” says Annaka Peterson, who works on injustice and poverty issues with Oxfam America. “About 20 percent of the $100 billion promised would support adaptation. However, a lot of estimates suggest that by 2030 developing countries could face costs from $140 billion to $300 billion a year.”

And actually, rich countries are not planning to come up with $100 billion a year themselves. They’re counting on sizable contributions from private companies to help meet that goal, which has some negotiators and activists wary about conflicts of interest.

2) Trust and Transparency

If nations are to fully invest in the Paris process, they need to be able to trust that other nations are working toward their goals and accurately reporting their progress. The Paris Agreement asks countries to publish national data on emissions as well as submit their data to a review body.

But how will that work in practice? Will the process be different for rich and poor countries? Negotiators in Marrakech will be working on creating those systems.

“What is the structure of how we look at transparency from now on?” asks Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation at World Wildlife Fund. “Will there be flexibility for countries in how they’re reporting?”

Countries also need to start getting specific about how they’ll fulfill their pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, says countries should be bringing detailed plans to Marrakech to demonstrate their progress. “What we need to see is NDCs turning from aspirational to roadmap and investment plans,” he says, “the sort of soup to nuts.”

3) Ambition

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the Paris Agreement is that it sets the world on a path to 2.7 to 3 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels — significantly higher than the 1.5–2 degree ceiling called for in the actual text of the agreement, and needed to avert drastic climate change.

But that more aggressive goal will play an important role in Marrakech, where another critical task is setting a plan to ratchet up the ambition of countries’ pledges every few years. The Paris deal calls for countries to assess progress in 2018 and return to the table in 2020 to revisit and ideally toughen their action plans. Diplomats need to create a system that can spur cuts every five years, while increasing the expectation of how drastic those cuts will be.

Based on the agreement’s swift ratification, climate advocates are hoping countries will be able to toughen their plans even earlier than called for, in 2018, as part of a “global fact check,” says Mohamed Adow, co-chair of Climate Action Network International.

“The question is: How fast and how deep is the green transformation going to be? This is why Marrakech is going to be important,” says Dagnet. “Marrakech needs to pave the way for more ambitious action.”

While the Paris conference was a flashy affair fit for celebrities and political wheelers and dealers, Marrakech is one for the wonks to sort out the nitty-gritty. The proceedings won’t be as glamorous, but they’re still critically important.

Read this article: 

U.N. climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, Naka, ONA, PUR, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.N. climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

U.N.’s annual climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

International negotiators are coming together on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, for the most highly anticipated climate gathering of the year. But they’ll spend the first couple of days doing exactly the same thing as the rest of the world: holding their breath as they nervously watch to see how the U.S. presidential election turns out.

Yes, America’s 2016 electoral dumpster fire will loom large at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, aka COP22. The main goal of the Marrakech meeting is to hash out more specific plans for putting last year’s landmark Paris climate agreement into action. Donald Trump has said he would “cancel” the agreement, so if he’s elected, negotiators are likely to panic. If an antagonistic American president moved to pull the U.S. out of the deal, implementing it around the globe would become a whole lot more difficult.

If, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton is elected, then conferees will feel more confident in getting down to work.

Riding a wave of momentum

U.S. election aside, there’s a lot of positive momentum heading into COP22. The Paris Agreement formally entered into force on Nov. 4, much earlier than anticipated. That’s because leaders of other countries wanted to make sure the deal was done before American voters had a chance to throw it off-course, so they kicked their normally lethargic ratification processes into high gear. That says a lot about the unprecedented level of international commitment to this deal.

The month leading up to Marrakech saw two other notable steps toward climate progress. On Oct. 6, more than 190 nations reached the world’s first agreement to cut emissions from international flights. And on Oct. 15, over 170 countries pledged to rid air conditioners and refrigerators of hydrofluorocarbons — which can have warming potential thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide — in a legally binding accord, potentially cutting warming by 0.5 degrees C.

So negotiators are landing in Morocco on a wave of optimism. At the same time, they know there’s a great deal that still needs to be done. Says Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute, “The COP is about celebrating, but it’s not about complacency.”

At last year’s Paris climate conference, 195 countries made a nonbinding agreement to keep warming below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, with a stretch goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees. Each nation made an action pledge to cut or curb its greenhouse gas emissions, and agreed to ratchet up its commitment in the future. The Paris signatories also agreed to raise more funds to help poorer countries adapt to a warming world.

Now, in Marrakech, negotiators will try to figure out how to turn those promises into action. They won’t be able to sort everything out, so some of the work will roll into 2018. But here are the three big issues on the agenda:

1) Money

One of the most contentious topics in Paris was money — big surprise — and you can expect the same in Marrakech.

In 2009, wealthier nations agreed to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance yearly by 2020 to aid poorer nations. In Paris, the rich countries reconfirmed that commitment, and in mid-October, released a plan for how they’d get there.

But many leaders from developing nations and policy advocates say $100 billion falls far short of what’s needed for countries to create programs that stave off climate change and build infrastructure that can withstand it, while working to improve quality of life for their citizens and grow jobs and GDP.

“My organization and many others remain concerned that this is nowhere near enough the amount of money that is needed to help the most vulnerable communities,” says Annaka Peterson, who works on injustice and poverty issues with Oxfam America. “About 20 percent of the $100 billion promised would support adaptation. However, a lot of estimates suggest that by 2030 developing countries could face costs from $140 billion to $300 billion a year.”

And actually, rich countries are not planning to come up with $100 billion a year themselves. They’re counting on sizable contributions from private companies to help meet that goal, which has some negotiators and activists wary about conflicts of interest.

2) Trust and Transparency

If nations are to fully invest in the Paris process, they need to be able to trust that other nations are working toward their goals and accurately reporting their progress. The Paris Agreement asks countries to publish national data on emissions as well as submit their data to a review body.

But how will that work in practice? Will the process be different for rich and poor countries? Negotiators in Marrakech will be working on creating those systems.

“What is the structure of how we look at transparency from now on?” asks Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation at World Wildlife Fund. “Will there be flexibility for countries in how they’re reporting?”

Countries also need to start getting specific about how they’ll fulfill their pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, says countries should be bringing detailed plans to Marrakech to demonstrate their progress. “What we need to see is NDCs turning from aspirational to roadmap and investment plans,” he says, “the sort of soup to nuts.”

3) Ambition

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the Paris Agreement is that it sets the world on a path to 2.7 to 3 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels — significantly higher than the 1.5–2 degree ceiling called for in the actual text of the agreement, and needed to avert drastic climate change.

But that more aggressive goal will play an important role in Marrakech, where another critical task is setting a plan to ratchet up the ambition of countries’ pledges every few years. The Paris deal calls for countries to assess progress in 2018 and return to the table in 2020 to revisit and ideally toughen their action plans. Diplomats need to create a system that can spur cuts every five years, while increasing the expectation of how drastic those cuts will be.

Based on the agreement’s swift ratification, climate advocates are hoping countries will be able to toughen their plans even earlier than called for, in 2018, as part of a “global fact check,” says Mohamed Adow, co-chair of Climate Action Network International.

“The question is: How fast and how deep is the green transformation going to be? This is why Marrakech is going to be important,” says Dagnet. “Marrakech needs to pave the way for more ambitious action.”

While the Paris conference was a flashy affair fit for celebrities and political wheelers and dealers, Marrakech is one for the wonks to sort out the nitty-gritty. The proceedings won’t be as glamorous, but they’re still critically important.

View this article:

U.N.’s annual climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, Naka, ONA, PUR, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.N.’s annual climate conference kicks off under shadow of U.S. election

An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

The Ross Sea marine reserve, which covers 600,000 square miles of the Southern Ocean off coast of the Antarctic, will be protected from commercial fishing for the next 35 years. Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, an international consortium of governments, approved it unanimously on Thursday.

At nearly twice the size of Texas, the area is home to over 10,000 species of flora and fauna, including penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, and fish.

But Ross Sea is also important for the valuable role it plays in research on the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the park as “one of the last unspoiled ocean wilderness areas on the planet,” and a sign of “further proof that the world is finally beginning to understand the urgency of the threats facing our planet.”

There are some environmentalists who say the designation doesn’t go far enough. World Wildlife Foundation’s Chris Johnson noted that the agreement must be made permanent.

Follow this link – 

An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

California’s big climate bills are a win for environmental justice

where there’s a bill, there’s a way

California’s big climate bills are a win for environmental justice

By on Aug 25, 2016Share

California Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign a pair of climate bills approved by state lawmakers this week. Together, SB32 and AB197 will not only tackle the state’s greenhouse emissions but also assure greater accountability for working class communities of color that too often carry the burden of local polluting industries.

SB32 creates a new target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030 (over below 1990 levels). But aggressive climate action doesn’t necessarily benefit all communities equally.

Take Coachella, California. Aside from its famously annoying music festival, Coachella, as part of Riverside County, is best known for having some of the worst air quality in the nation.

Coachella — a working class Latino community where one in three residents survives below the poverty line — is stuck with a disproportionate pollution burden, even while California gets all the credit for cutting overall greenhouse gasses.

Eduardo Garcia, an assembly member from Coachella, authored AB197. The bill assures permanent legislative oversight of the Air Resources Board, an agency that environmental justice activists say doesn’t focus enough on reducing the harmful effect of local polluting refineries and factories. Together, the two bills finally begin to bridge the gap between big climate solutions and local air problems, helping underserved communities breathe a little easier.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Link: 

California’s big climate bills are a win for environmental justice

Posted in alo, Anchor, Bragg, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on California’s big climate bills are a win for environmental justice

A chicken tractor on steroids: Using chickens to build your soil

green4us

View the original here – 

A chicken tractor on steroids: Using chickens to build your soil

Posted in GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A chicken tractor on steroids: Using chickens to build your soil